The Covenant of Genesis_A Novel Page 6

  FOUR

  Another fusillade of gunfire tore through the ship as Nina limped toward the lab. She shrieked, dropping flat beside a storeroom door as more holes exploded in the walls. Electrical sparks crackled angrily from a severed cable overhead.

  The firing ceased. Nina held her breath, expecting it to resume at any moment, but nothing happened. The gunner had swept the length of each of the Pianosa’s decks. Either he thought he’d killed everybody aboard …

  Or the next phase of the attack was about to begin.

  Chase still couldn’t get any purchase on the damaged clip. Caught unprepared, with no time to get any extra oxygen into his system, he could find his body rapidly burning through the limited amount of air in his lungs.

  The punctured tank ran dry. He kicked, trying to slow his descent, but without air to provide buoyancy the deep suit was nothing but dead weight.

  His leg muscles were cramping, lactic acid building up as the oxygen in his blood dwindled. He spasmed, the involuntary movement forcing air from his lungs.

  He was about to drown—

  Something thumped against him. He looked around—and saw Bejo. Bejo’s hand scrabbled against the side of the suit, fingernails pushing under the damaged metal.

  The clip opened.

  The deep suit’s front unlatched, the last pockets of air inside it gushing upward. Chase immediately tugged at the release for the seal on his left shoulder as Bejo did the same on the right. He desperately shrugged his arms free as the young Indonesian pulled at the rings around his thighs to unlock them. The deep suit was still hauling him down like an anchor.

  One leg loose.

  Fire searing his lungs, head pounding …

  The other seal was released. Bejo grabbed him and kicked upward as the suit dropped away, tearing off one of Chase’s flippers.

  He was clear—but he still had to reach the surface.

  Where the pirates were waiting.

  Holes had been blown through the lab’s walls, the metal peeled back like the skin of a half-eaten orange. Some of Nina’s equipment had been destroyed, the magnifying lens over the clay tablet shattered. But she ignored it, instead searching for the first aid kit—Lincoln’s only hope of survival.

  She found the green box in a cabinet. No time to check if it contained anything useful, and no point either. Either it did or the maimed crewman would die. Clutching the box, she hurried back along the corridor.

  That was when she heard shouting.

  Inside the ship.

  The pounding of blood in Chase’s head felt almost like physical blows, blackness roiling in from the edges of his vision as the shimmering waves on the surface drew tantalizingly closer, closer …

  He breached the surface, taking in clean, fresh air in tremendous whooping gasps. Bejo burst from the water beside him. Chase’s vision cleared—to reveal the speedboat bobbing less than twenty feet away. The men inside it spotted the gasping figures, expressions of surprise rapidly changing to anger.

  “Not again!” Chase wheezed as he pulled Bejo back underwater, bullets churning the surface around them.

  “Mr. Lincoln!” Nina called softly. The smoke in the passageway had thickened, making her cough. “Can you hear me?”

  A faint moan reached her. She limped to where she had left him. The pool of blood had spread, little rivulets winding along the deck.

  She set down the first aid kit and opened it. There were several rolls of bandages and a packet containing sterile gauze: at least she might be able to stop the bleeding. There didn’t appear to be any painkillers, though.

  “I’m going to put on a bandage,” she told Lincoln as she tore open the packet. “I’ll be as gentle as I can, but it might hurt.”

  “Can’t get … any worse …” he said in a strained whisper, eyes closed.

  Hesitantly, Nina brought the piece of gauze to the wound. A nub of bone was visible amid the torn muscle. She fought past her fear and revulsion and pressed the pad against his arm. Lincoln let out a strangled screech.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she gasped. The gauze was already soaked, and she could feel blood on her palm. Keeping it in place, she groped with her other hand for one of the rolls of bandages. “I’m going to—”

  Someone cried out through the smoke, a panicked plea—which was cut off by a crackle of gunfire. Nina flinched. The shots were close by.

  Lincoln forced his eyes open. “Go.”

  “But I can’t leave—”

  “Go!” He pushed her back. The blood-sodden gauze fell into the crimson pool.

  Nina regarded him helplessly, then stood. More voices came through the smoke. Closer.

  She gave him one final, fearful look, then turned and ran.

  The firing had stopped, but Chase and Bejo stayed underwater, swimming some ten feet beneath the surface.

  They passed under the pontoon dock. They could have surfaced between its floats for air, under the cover of the deck—but the pirates would expect them to do just that, and would be watching. Instead, they kept swimming along the length of the survey ship. Debris floated above them, smashed pieces of—

  The Pianosa’s boat.

  The wrecked craft was inverted, smoke wafting from the edge of the hole where the RPG had blasted it. But its wood-and-fiberglass hull was still afloat, the curved keel above the water.

  Chase surfaced inside the upturned boat. Bejo popped up next to him. “You okay?” Chase asked. The young man nodded, panting for breath. “Thanks.” He squeezed Bejo’s shoulder in gratitude.

  Engine noise. He looked through the hole to see that the first speedboat had already pulled up at the dock beside the gangway up to the main deck. Behind it, the RIB was coming to a standstill.

  Its occupants jumped onto the dock. Chase assessed the pirates in a flash: dirty, scruffy, with the wiry, slightly potbellied build of men used to intense bursts of adrenaline-fueled physical exertion followed by celebratory excess.

  But one man stood out: taller, harder-faced, conspicuously lacking the cheap gold chains the others wore. Not all the pirates were amateurs; Chase could tell simply from the way the man held his AK—sideways on its strap across his stomach, the barrel pointed down, out of harm’s way—that he had received proper military training. The group’s leader.

  The man barked an order, then quickly ascended the gangway, his entourage following.

  Nina peered around the corner of the passageway, looking back toward Lincoln. She couldn’t just turn her back and abandon him. Maybe their attackers would see that he posed no threat and leave him alone, in which case she might be able to return and help …

  She froze as a man emerged from the smoke, a red bandanna pulled up over his nose and mouth. He had a rifle in his hands, pointed at Lincoln. He warily advanced, stopping a few feet from the injured crewman, and shouted back over his shoulder.

  Nina remained still, terrified that he might spot her but unable to look away. The pirate shouted again. More men appeared through the smoke. One of them, clearly the leader, kicked Lincoln’s leg, shouting in Indonesian. The wounded man looked painfully up at the new arrival, who shouted again.

  Finally, Lincoln spoke.

  “Fuck … you.”

  The briefest flicker of anger crossing his face, the pirate leader shot Lincoln in the forehead with his AK. The back of his skull burst open, dark gore sluicing down the wall behind him.

  Nina clapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out. Move, she told herself. Run! But her legs remained frozen, pinned to the spot by fear.

  The pirate was about to step over the corpse when something caught his attention. He crouched, lifting something from the bloodied floor.

  The piece of gauze.

  He regarded it for a moment, then looked up, eyes filled with the realization that someone else was still alive.

  Now Nina ran.

  The ravaged corridor blurred past her as she hunted for a hiding place. She reached the storeroom, the damaged cable
s still crackling on the wall outside it—then continued past it. She didn’t know what was in the storeroom, but she did know that her lab contained somewhere she could hide.

  Whether she would be safe there was another matter.

  His breath recovered, Chase looked through the hole again. The only pirate he could see was standing beside the RIB’s mooring behind the empty speedboat with his AK-47 slung casually over one shoulder. The rumble of the other speedboat’s engine echoed off the ship’s side, its crew still searching for him and Bejo—but in the wrong place, on the far side of the dock’s long arm.

  “Wait here,” he said, then swam under the rear of the upturned boat. He surfaced slowly, only his eyes and nose exposed as he scanned the rest of the dock. The body of one of the Indonesian crewmen was sprawled halfway along it—but there were no more pirates in sight. He looked at the floatplane. The fire had mostly burned itself out, a few patches of spilled fuel still alight on the water below the wrecked wing. Its engine was still running.

  He slipped back inside the boat. “I’m going to get to the plane,” he told Bejo, “see if the radio’s still working. If I can contact the Coast Guard, they’ll get someone out here to help us.”

  “It could take hours for them to get here, Mr. Eddie,” Bejo warned.

  “I’m not sitting under this fucking thing until those arseholes leave. Not while Nina’s still inside the ship.” He prepared to dive. “You wait in here, though. No point both of us risking our lives.”

  Bejo gave him a nervous look. “Good luck, Mr. Eddie. Try not to die, hey?”

  “That’s part of the plan. Actually, that’s the whole plan.” Chase submerged once more.

  He swam the short distance to the side of the dock. Surfacing between two of the pontoon sections, he checked on his enemies. The RIB driver’s back was now to him as he looked up at the Pianosa, and the speedboat had moved away to lurk near the ship’s stern.

  Now or never.

  Chase pulled himself out of the water, lying flat on the decking close to the dead crewman. Scattered all about him was the expedition’s diving gear. He crawled along the dock. The boxes and crates would keep him hidden from the men in the speedboat for at least part of the way, meaning he only had to worry about the boatman. The pirate was still facing away, now swinging his Kalashnikov halfheartedly from its strap. Amateur, Chase thought with disdain—but it would only take one shout from him to raise the alarm.

  He passed the plane’s tail. No more cover, but he had barely ten feet to go to reach the cockpit. He looked around the last crate for the speedboat. It was moving slowly away from him, a couple of men standing and peering into the water to each side, guns ready.

  If he moved quickly enough, he could make it before anyone saw him.

  One last glance back at the boatman—

  He was staring right at Chase. His expression was almost quizzical, as if he was wondering why there were now two bodies lying on the dock when there had only been one before … until his brain finally registered that one of them had just moved.

  He fumbled with his AK.

  Caught in the open, Chase was about to dive back into the water when he saw something lying nearby.

  His speargun.

  He snatched it up as the pirate brought his rifle to bear—

  Chase fired first. The spear lanced down the length of the dock—and hit the pirate square in the chest, the Magnum round at its head blowing a fist-sized hole in his rib cage.

  The dead man slumped backward. But the pirates in the speedboat had heard the noise.

  Chase dropped the empty speargun and dived back into the water as they started shooting.

  The pirate leader kicked open the lab door, sweeping his gun from side to side before stepping inside.

  Nina watched through the narrow slit of her hiding place. More men entered the lab behind him. For a moment, it seemed he was staring right at her. Then he moved out of sight, whispering something in his native language.

  The only reason he would have to whisper was if he thought there was a danger of being overheard. He knew she was in here. She froze, not even daring to breathe.

  The leader stepped slowly around the table, boots crunching on broken glass as he headed for the storage cabinet in one corner. Finger on his AK’s trigger, he reached out, gripped the locker’s handle, and yanked it open, aiming his gun inside—

  A small wave of items clattered to the floor at his feet. The locker contained nothing but archaeological supplies, tools used to examine and clean artifacts recovered from the sea. One of the pirates giggled.

  The leader glared at him, immediately silencing the laugh, then gave an order. All but two of his men left the room to continue the hunt.

  The leader, however, moved back to the table. He had found what he was looking for: Nina’s laptop, the expedition’s cameras … and the clay tablet.

  He brushed the broken pieces of the magnifying lens off the tablet and picked it up, giving the strange text a cursory glance before shoving it into a large satchel. Then he turned his attention to the computer, unfolding a scrap of paper and reading the list on it.

  Crunched up painfully inside the sonar array’s case, the device itself now propped against one wall, Nina struggled to see what he was doing. He seemed to be looking for particular files. He tapped on the keyboard, performing a search, then smiled as it came up with a result. He slammed the laptop closed and picked it up, then pointed at the SLR camera. The pirate in the red bandanna took it. The third man asked a question, gesturing hopefully at something out of Nina’s sight, but the leader just crumpled the paper in his fist and issued a command. His men turned and left the room. With a last look around the lab, the leader followed them, Nina’s laptop under his arm.

  Nina waited several seconds before opening the lid slightly. The pirates’ footsteps had faded, but even so, she held on a little longer before climbing stiffly out. She looked at the table.

  If that was why they had come here, why had they killed everyone? To steal the clay tablet?

  She was about to go to the door when a sound from outside startled her.

  One of the pirates was coming back.

  Chase heard the speedboat getting closer, the thrum of its outboard a menacing animal growl behind him as he swam.

  The pirates had stopped shooting, finally realizing that their bullets couldn’t penetrate the water. But they were heading straight for him, picking out his shape through the shimmering waves.

  The Pianosa’s keel was directly ahead, a dark, barnacle-crusted mass. If he went under it, he could surface for air—and if they followed him around the ship, he could double back and hopefully reach the dock before they caught up.

  He swam deeper, passing beneath the survey ship.

  Nina didn’t have time to return to her hiding place. All she could do was dart into the locker, hunching down and pulling the door almost shut.

  The pirate entered the lab. It was the third man, the one who had been rebuffed by his leader. Nina watched through the crack of the door as he glanced furtively around the room, then picked up the underwater camera.

  Thieving son of a bitch, Nina thought. She waited for him to leave. But now that he had one valuable piece of equipment, the thought had entered his head that there might be others. His gaze darted calculatingly over the room’s contents.

  He regarded the locker. Frowned. Nina knew why.

  When he’d left the room, its door had been open.

  Her hand groped through the cramped space, searching for anything among the loose items that she could use as a weapon.

  The pirate advanced on the locker. He gripped the handle, pulled it—

  Nina blasted a spray of astringent powder into his eyes.

  He shrieked and reeled back, clutching at his face with his free hand. His AK came up in the other. Nina leapt from the locker and slapped it aside. It fell from his hand—but the strap tangled around his arm. She couldn’t wrest it from him.

&nb
sp; Instead she raced for the door. Behind her, the pirate shouted as he fumbled for his rifle.

  Back up the passageway, past the storeroom, sparks still popping from the damaged wiring—

  Running footsteps ahead. Another pirate was coming back.

  She barged through the storeroom door. A cramped chamber, packed with stacked wooden crates and maintenance gear and large paint cans. A porthole on the opposite wall, two .50-caliber bullet holes flanking it.

  The porthole was too small for her to fit through.

  Trapped.

  She slammed the door shut behind her and yanked a crate down to the deck, jamming it against the entrance.

  But it wouldn’t hold them for long.

  She looked back at the equipment. The twin cylindrical tanks of an oxyacetylene torch were secured in a rack. But she didn’t know how to use it, or even light it.

  Come on, think, something—

  A metal box about the same size as the sonar case turned out to contain a piece of gear she couldn’t immediately identify, some sort of heavy-duty grinder or cutter. But simply hiding in the box wouldn’t save her—

  The door banged against the crate. The pirates were outside.

  Chase surfaced on the Pianosa’s port side. Not far away was another boat, a sleek cabin cruiser. The machine gun he’d heard earlier was mounted on its bow, another pirate manning it.

  Sudden noise to his right. The speedboat rounded the Pianosa’s bow, its occupants shouting warnings to the men aboard the cruiser. The machine gunner immediately swung his weapon around.

  Looking for him.

  Chase didn’t wait to be seen, powering back under the surface, scraping against the barnacles.

  He heard the chug of the .50-cal—

  The huge bullets were even less effective at penetrating the water than the 7.62mm ammo of the AKs, smashing apart as they hit the surface. But the impacts alone slammed at Chase like miniature grenade explosions. Barely able to endure the assault on his eardrums, he swam back under the ship.